


Willing To Wait For It

by magdalyna



Series: Legacy To Protect [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Force Bond, Force Tree, Guerrilla Warfare, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Poe Dameron, Poe Dameron Space Latino, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Yavin 4, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-24 11:04:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16173782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdalyna/pseuds/magdalyna
Summary: Poe Javien Dameron Bey has a legacy of love to protect, his mother's wedding ring on a necklace he wears meant for a man everyone knows is dead and a Force blessed bond that still twinges with the jagged pain of a phantom limb.During a critical mission gone sideways, Poe has the sinking suspicion that The Force isn't through with him yet and the reminder that he isn't a fresh faced idealist anymore.





	Willing To Wait For It

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, that is the Hamiliton/Aaron Burr musical ref in the title and series name you think it is. 
> 
> Poe does speak a dialect of Space Spanish conversationally but not exclusively here as opposed to Galactic Basic, so while the text is written in English, the words he emphasizes are written in (my poor) Spanish. 
> 
> Brought to you by all my feelings about Space Mayans and how there's a galaxy of other families besides the Skywalker drama llamas.

Once, when he was much younger and much stupider – less impulse control, outsized view of his own importance, he had shout-hissed to his best friend in the fever pitch of a blistering argument that had started as a venting session gone wrong.

“You aren’t the only one with a family legacy to protect, Benjamin Bail Organa Solo!” Poe Javien Dameron Bey had said that day, meaning every emotion but regretting the words he had strung together almost instantly. 

It was right there in his full name, but months later, the New Republican Naval Academy would only have fields open for one surname on his flimsiwork, and within the Core Worlds, that was assumed to be the father’s family name, mother’s name only if the father wasn’t in the picture. As the son of war heroes he knew he would stand out as it was so he did not correct the sequence of his name to the bevy of strangers around him. Besides, all who knew him would come to know of his mother anyway so the disrespect it would have been back home was merely a question of conversational pacing on Hosnia.

The Yavinese had always been matrilineal, and the Iberian speaking refugees who made their way to the system in the centuries after the Sith came to destroy the Massassi Temple had, in a show of respect, taken on the naming practices if not the social structure of their new home. 

Had there been no war, no Empire to fight, no Vader to become the galaxies’ boogeyman, no Death Star – Shara Bey would have done her duty to her homeworld with only a forlorn glance at the freedom of a cockpit. What need would the galaxy have had of a priestess of the sacred sky mysteries that governed life on Yavin IV since time immemorial?

But there had been war and so Shara Bey did for her people the greater duty of ensuring survival by taking to the skies, and the stars beyond. That it made her freedom loving heart sing was a mixed blessing.

He had been younger and dumber, he and his best friend, this boy he had known since childhood. The two of them would reunite that evening in mutual chagrin, because no disagreement could last long between them. Poe had been newly 18 and on his first leave from the Academy and Ben was perpetually 27 months behind him and sullen about it, neither of them at ease with the prolonged separation. 

They curled up together between the great roots of the Force Tree graft his mother had earned after she helped save the original tree with Luke Skywalker, and which Poe had then excitedly helped his mother plant when he was barely taller than her knees.  


Poe held his arms around the person most precious to him and stroked his fingers through Ben’s gorgeous hair. “I’m sorry you’re having such a rough time. All I meant was that you shouldn’t worry about being the kind of Jedi that Luke is. Just be the best kind of Jedi that _you_ can be. Be the best kind of Ben you can be. That’s all anyone can do, okay?” he had said softly, nose rubbing at Ben’s temple as he spoke in the language they invariably spoke to each other, which was Yavinese. 

Ben spoke Iberian when he was with his mother, and if Poe was ever in her presence he spoke it to her as well. He felt she appreciated hearing another voice speak to her in the tongue of her people. Poe knew the Enclave was conducted in Basic, so he made a point of it for Ben’s sake. Poe spoke it with his father and extended family but he knew it was a lifeline that Ben counted on even if he didn’t frame it as such.

Ben had given a weak half shrug. “It feels like even if I did my best, in either category, he would be disappointed with me anyway. That anything I do would be a failure in his eyes.” Poe had not been surprised by the bitterness in Ben’s voice. 

He had cupped Ben’s cheek lightly with a hand to turn his head to Poe’s so their gazes could meet. “Not in mine, _mi corazon_. Not in mine.” He said as he pressed a kiss to the spot on the forehead between and above the eyes, and then a gentle peck to Ben’s eyelids, one by one and then finally to his plush, full lips. This kiss he turned deeper. Ben melted and bloomed with Poe’s affection, humming through their bond deep and abiding. 

Poe was not Force-sensitive by blood but a lifetime of climbing over roots and through boughs and working up to the crest of the treeline – these and constant proximity had saturated his body and tuned him into the vibration of the tree. Like an old-fashioned tuning fork, it had primed him for precisely the best complement to his other skillset that made being a pilot the natural choice – the situational awareness and internal gyroscope ideal for flying starfighters had been met by the Force Tree with a radar of its own, namely that Poe could sense if Force-sensitives were around him. 

Normally, this meant that while home on Yavin he would always be orientated to the dim blur of fireflies that indicated the Jedi Enclave. A slight, ever present tug hooked around his navel also could point the way, which was handy if his eyes happened to be closed. 

Meeting Ben had been like hugging a supernova. 

A supernova that was meant for _you_ and you alone.

That first meeting, Ben had been covered in a gauze of rainbow fireworks but it was Poe who felt like an electrical storm was inside of him, lit up and _singing_ inside of him. 

The Force had no language but Poe could hear the chant perfectly in the voice of his mind, whisper-shouting in joy: minehomeprotectguardloveminemineminesoulhomeLOVEPROTECT

That was, of course, when he fell off the branch he had been perched on for the better part of an hour with this strange boy with more limbs than grace and sad eyes hidden by a nest of black hair braided through in twisting curlicues with delicate pastel colored crystals. The picture the parts of this boy had made had been enchanting to a young Poe.

Ben had fallen too, but he fell on the other side of the branch, their hands gripped in convivial lapsed introductions had prompted a concussive shockwave on contact. 

The adults were not impressed with such a sign of destiny. 

Once they had both managed to sit up, Poe realized they were mirrored on the ground, legs splayed, feet that could have touched if not for the small distance. The boy had met his steady gaze with a look of wonder. 

Poe had thought, idly amidst the hubbub that followed, if he was to protect a boy who would one day obviously be a Jedi, would Poe also have a lightsaber of his own? No … that didn’t fit right with the song the Force had sung to his very soul. He’d have a shield to match the saber. He’d be the one to clear this boy’s way. No, better than that: he’d have a way of making it so this boy wouldn’t have to raise his lightsaber except for fun. 

Poe had been foolish and fanciful as a child, _‘leading with his heart wide open’_ , his Mama always told him with a smile and a sigh.

Of course, now Poe had a galaxy wide war of his own and a body old before his time: flight crash injuries, the built up impact of g-forces on his fragile human joints from a life spent in the cockpit, the burnt out pump of adrenaline through his bloodstream. He has blood on his hands, from the end of Black One’s blaster but also more intimately. He has choked the life out of enemy combatants on ground missions, blaster too inconvenient to fire and draw alarm or kicked too far away in the scuffle, where his special brand of charisma was needed to finesse intel or handle the situation accordingly. All of it served the Resistance, and so he tamped down his disgust and did what he had to do.

The General gives him the missions she needs to know will get done properly and he will not betray that level of trust in him, in his resolve. 

He had questioned her judgement once before and it cost him everything. He can’t do that again, now when the galaxy is at stake.

When he later gets to know Rey and Finn better he will feel practically ancient, will wonder at both their naiveté and bloodthirstiness that springs from the new-credit shine of their youth in equal measure. But that will come later, after his first catastrophic failure. His betrayal of duty, to Ben. To the very Force itself. 

(Han Solo will ask him, blunt as a freighter, his age-worn hands gripped on Poe’s shoulders in the middle of shaking him, just what Poe thinks a Force-null could have done against a bunch of Force wielding terrorists that an entire school of baby Jedi couldn’t do but Poe can’t answer him, heart caught in his throat as he starts sobbing. He is a man grown now but has never felt more helpless. He will drop to the ground of Yavin in front of the charred husk of the Enclave and Han will go down with him, cradling his arms around Poe’s shaking body. Kes and Leia will share a grimace from their positions behind the two men a few feet away. Kes has not forgiven the General for what he sees as her part in getting Poe’s Mama killed but on this day Poe will appreciate the grace Kes digs up for not picking a fight.)

He keeps flying missions. 

What else is there for a flyboy to do? What else could he spread his wings for, if not to follow the General's clarion call to justice?

Like he has before all his official flights, he kisses a token for good luck: a whisperbird feather preserved in a clear nanoresin the rough size of the length of his hand as an adult. He keeps it stored in his footlocker, along with his parents’ dogtags.

Eventually he starts dreaming about blood splatter on snow in a wide perfect arc that slowly melts into salt crystals that crunch under his feet, hard packed where the snow was softer. Night to day to night, all of white and pink and red playing over his eyelids. He wakes with the taste of salt in his mouth, and the hard tang of copper. 

He only really misses Ben when his eyes are closed.


End file.
